Hans Niclaus, son of David and Verena Mertz, was baptized 8 Sep 1715 in Alsace. He arrived America in 1733, at age 18, on the same ship as his parents, sister Christina and brother Peter. He was later listed with David and Peter as a founder of the Longswamp Church.

I consider David Mertz to be my immigrant Mertz ancestor. When I was developing my system of using a hierarchical designation code to structurally link every Mertz or Martz back to their “original American Mærtz ancestor”, I initially thought I would start this line with David who I would designate “D” and then his sons would be numbered D1 and D2 and I would build out from there.

But to be sure, his teenage sons Nicholas and Peter, his only sons who survived to adulthood, came with him, and were also immigrants. So I have chosen instead to denote Nicholas with the single letter code “N” and Peter with the single letter code “P”. It is justified since the sons were also immigrants but it is justified also because it better aligns their descendants — those with three character or four character designations — by the timeframe in which they lived. Therefore, Nicholas is designated N. (The “D” code is not necessary and is not used.)

We don’t know a lot about Nicholas, but we know all the key facts, from his baptism to his arrival in Philadelphia which confirmed his age. He did not leave a will but several Orphans Court petitions exist from which we learn the name of his widow and all of his children and a little more about many of them.

The naming of all of his children is key because the records for his younger brother Peter are not nearly so complete. However, I am relying on this simple logic -- any Mertz named in the earliest Longswamp Reformed Church records were descendants of either Nicholas or Peter and if they were of the right age to be of the next generation, then if they were not a child of Nicholas, they must have been a child of Peter.

It seems simple now when I lay out all the pertinent facts, but they came together piece by piece over a time period of several years. But the simple truth that I recognize now is that the Longswamp church records can be used to identify generation three Mertzes (John David being generation one in America and his sons Nicholas and Peter being generation two). These Gen III children were all born from the late 1730’s to the mid 1750’s and they had their children in the 1760’s and 1770’s. It’s the timing that tells the story.

The sons of Nicholas were Jacob, Henry, Conrad and Nicholas. John, Peter and yet another Nicholas were known sons of Peter and it seems totally conclusive that Philip was one of their brothers. David, the other Jacob and Abraham must also have been sons of Peter.

Nicholas and his male descendants to 1850 are covered in the Mærtz Hierarchical Project:
https://www.mertzgenealogy.com/names/nicholas_mertz_family_n.pdf

Nicholas died before any Pennsylvania Septennial Census was taken and well before the first U. S. Census. He was listed as a land-holder in Longswamp on all tax lists 1754-1760 and then in 1765 and thereafter it was his widow Margaret.

Joseph A Meiser in Northumberland County Pioneers lists all the children of Nicholas Mertz and purports to have approximate birth dates for each of them. But I believe all he did was list them in the order they were named in Orphans Court records and give them birth years two years apart, paying attention also to who was said to be a minor at the time of Nicholas’ death.

The Berks County Orphans Court dealt with the estate of Nicholas Mertz over a period of several years.

The earliest petition was 15 May 1761, when Margaret Mertz, widow and administratrix and Jacob Mertz, administrator of Nicholas Mertz, late of Berks County, deceased, requested that guardians be appointed for the minor children. Guardians then were appointed dividing the children into three groups from which I think I can sense their respective ages.

• Henry Krist was appointed for both Elizabeth and Henry. I think they were the two oldest of the minor children nearing the age of 18.
• Peter Mertz was appointed for Conrad, I think he may have been over 14.
• And two guardians were appointed for the four remaining children: Maria Elizabeth, Magdalena, Maria and Nicholas. I believe they were all under the age of 14.

Then, on 11 May 1762 in a petition filed by Jacob Mertz, eldest son of Nicholas Mertz, it was stated that his father died intestate eighteen months ago leaving a widow and ten children which he then named and requested that the court determine how to divide Nicholas’ land in Longswamp. The named children were: the petitioner, Margaretta (since married to Nicholas Jacobi), Eve (wife of Frederick Braun) –- all of whom were of age — and Elizabeth, Conrad, Henry, Maria Elizabeth, Magdalena, Maria and Nicholas — all minors. He also mentioned Bernard Kline, son of Nicholas’ deceased daughter Catherine who had married Lorentz Kline.

Finally, when the estate accounting was approved on 13 Aug 1763, the same eleven children were named but by then Elizabeth had married Lawrence Schollenberger.

Nicholas is not on find-a-grave. He no doubt was buried at Longswamp Reformed or on his own farm.

We know the names of his daughters from the various Orphans Court petitions after his death.

Catherine. Catherine either pre-deceased her father or died no later than the 1762 Orphans Court filing. Whether Catherine was older than Jacob is not clear, but I believe they were the two oldest. If Nicholas married in, say, 1735, then his first child may have been born in about 1736. So I have made Catherine the oldest, born in 1736.

Catherine married Lorentz Kline and they had a son Bernard Kline who died in Union County, PA in 1837.

Margaret. She married Nicholas Jacobi apparently at a time after the 1761 and before the 1762 petition.

Maria Eve. She married Frederick Braun of Longswamp and they had a daughter Susanna who many people believe is Susanna, wife of Peter Mertz (Maria Eve’s cousin) and they call here, therefore, Susanna Braun. But there is no real evidence that Peter’s wife, who was definitely Susana, was nee Braun. And there is no evidence that Peter’s wife was Frederick’s daughter. So I have come to have a lot of doubt on this issue, but it seems impossible to absolutely prove one way or the other.

Elizabeth. She married Lawrence Schollenberger apparently after the 1762 petition and before the 1763 estate accounting.

Maria Magdalena. She married Conrad Siebert.

Maria Elizabetha. Since the daughters were named in several petitions, it seems clear that four of them had similar names: Elizabeth, Maria Elizabetha, Maria Eve and Maria. Maria Elizabetha married her cousin Nicholas Klein, son of Hans Theobold Klein and Anna Christina Mertz.

Maria. She died young, unmarried, in 1776, and left an interesting will which suggested some things that otherwise might not be knowable. She was single and made specific bequests to: her mother Margaret, elder brother Jacob [Jacob may well have seemed to her like her surrogate father], David Klein her nephew (son of Nicholas Klein deceased) and the poor of Longswamp Township. She made no mention at all of her other six older brothers and sisters, the residue of her estate to go to her sisters Maria Elizabeth Klein (Nicholas) and Maria Magdalena Seybert (Conrad) and her brother John Nicholas. These three, together with her being the four youngest children.

Then there is this. When the will was recorded it said “Letters of Administration .....granted to Philip Fenstermacher....Guardian heretofore appointed by the Orphans Court of the said County during the minority of Nicholas Mertz only brother and next of kin to the said Maria Mertz deceased of the personal and estate of the said Maria Mertz.” (Philip Fenstermacher was indeed one of the two guardians originally appointed in 1761 for the four minor children including Maria and Nicholas.)

The part that I have italicized was squeezed into the recording on a form which didn’t really allow room to write that phrase in, but I believe it was supposed to read as I’ve laid it out. At issue is the phrase “only brother”. What’s that about? Her father had four sons, how can she have just one brother? My theory is that it suggests that her father Nicholas may have had two wives and had his youngest four children by his second wife. But I have no other evidence to support this idea.

Another very important conclusion we can draw from that court order is that her brother Nicholas seems still to have been a minor in 1776. He must have been born about the time of his father’s death or just after. There was a Nicholas who died in Northumberland County in 1801 and we know he was born in 1748. Clearly the Nicholas who died in Northumberland County was not the son of Nicholas.

From the Orphans Court petitions, I know that Nicholas had four sons:

N1 John Jacob. He moved to Northumberland County by about 1785 and then on to western New York State by 1800.

N2 Henry. I think Henry too did not move to Northumberland County but like Conrad maybe wandered elsewhere in Berks County In Henry’s case I think he went to Manheim township which later was made part of Schuylkill County when it was created.

N3 Conrad. I’m not 100% certain what happened to Conrad. I do not think he moved to Northumberland County and I think he stayed in Berks County at least until 1800 and then he either died or moved somewhere I have yet to discover.

N4 Nicholas. I don’t know what happened to Nicholas.

I do not know her maiden name let alone the names of her parents. I really know very little about her.